Year 1808 saw Napoleon reorganizing teaching,
for which the University held the monopoly (September 17th), appointing
Jean-Pierre Louis de Fontanes as its grandmaster. Moreover, the
regime turned increasingly back to its roots: the decree of March
1st introduced a new hereditary nobility in France; on the 24th,
the judiciary was "cleansed" of elements from the Revolution;
on October 22nd, a decree replaced the words "French Empire" for
"French Republic" on coins. The need for soldiers kept growing:
On September 8th, the Senate approved an extraordinary levy of
160,000 troops, which included the conscription of classes from
1807 to 1809 and that of 1810, called in advance.

Another pillar of the imperial regime that risked crumbling: religious
peace. In early 1808, the conflict with the Holy See entered an
acute phase. On February 2nd, General Sextius Alexandre François
de Miollis, in pursuance of his orders, entered Rome with his
troops. Soon, several provinces were detached from the Papal States
to be united to Italy. Pius
VII responded by excommunicating Napoleon (March 27th) and
two months later, by prohibiting French bishops to obey their
government.

However, everything seemed to be fine with the Russian ally. Although
they were unable to agree on sharing the spoils of a Turkish empire
that they were planning to break up for their benefit, Napoleon
and Tsar
Alexander I met in Erfurt at the end of September to sign
an agreement renewing their alliance. They separated two weeks
later with touching demonstrations of friendship. The only downside:
Talleyrand
took such opportunity to warn the Tsar against the "madness" of
Napoleon.

However, 1808 was mainly dominated by the affairs in Spain. Earlier
that year, Napoleon continued to bring troops into the Peninsula
while the political situation became increasingly unstable. On
March 18th, the Spanish people, led by Crown
Prince Ferdinand, rose against a proposed departure for America
of the royal family. The next day, King
Charles IV abdicated in favor of his son, and the Prime Minister
Manuel Godoy was overthrown. Refusing to recognize the fact, Napoleon
left for Bayonne, Basque Country, to meet the Spanish royal family.
On May 5th, Charles IV put his crown at Napoleon's disposal, a
decision ratified by Ferdinand and his brothers on the 10th. Now,
even if the princes were trembling before the Emperor and submitting,
the people adopted an opposing stance. On March 29th, a "junta"
was established in Seville, self-called the people in arms, against
the French. On the 2nd, Madrid revolted as well. Despite the harshness
of the crackdown, their example was spreading. Many cities were
the scene of anti-French uprisings in the last days of May and
first of June. The imperial troops intervened with varying degrees
of success and endured on July 22nd their biggest defeat: at Bailen,
General Pierre Dupont de l'Etang capitulated with 20,000 soldiers.
Joseph
Bonaparte, the new King of Spain appointed by Napoleon, had
been in Madrid for two days. A week later, he must flee his capital.
On August 5th, in view of the gravity of the situation, Napoleon
sent to Spain half of the French forces in Germany, which took
however several weeks to arrive and must face not only the Spanish
insurgents but also the British troops released by the French
defeats in Portugal.

Indeed the British, having gained a foothold in the Iberian Peninsula
on July 8th, 1808 to defeat Jean-Andoche
Junot at Vimiero on August 21st, and having received from
him on the 30th the capitulation of Cintra, entered Spain on October
15. The situation they found was by no means a bed of roses. The
French were again on the offensive and accumulated victories,
galvanized by the presence of the Emperor, who had joined them
in early November. Cautiously, the British army retreated to Portugal.
After the French victory of Somosierra
on November 30th, Madrid's only option was to capitulate. Napoleon
staged his clemency and announced a package of revolutionary measures,
which he believed, would put the people at ease: abolition of
feudal rights, customs, and provincial tribunal of the Inquisition.
However, he also introduced a policy of requisitions to finance
the war.

On December 11th, 1808, the English entered Spain again and the
Emperor decided to personally take the lead against them. He desisted
however upon receiving a dispatch from Cambacérès
with news on the Austrian armies. He gave up his pursuit of the
British army on January 3rd, 1809 and returned to Paris, leaving
to Marshal
Jean-de-Dieu Soult the task to pursue hostilities against
the English in the peninsula, with mixed results.

On April 8th, 1809, Napoleon saw the Austrians,
supported financially by the British, trespass the limits of Bavaria,
an allied state of France. On the 10th the Archduke Johann von
Habsburg entered Italy. The Emperor headed his army and defeated
the Austrians at Tengen, Abensberg, Eckmühl,
Regensburg, and Gora. Less than a month later, the
Eagle was in Schoenbrunn
(May 12th). On the 13th, Vienna capitulated. A few days later,
Napoleon made a first attempt to stand on the left bank of the
Danube where the Archduke
Charles of Austria was attended by his troops (Battle
of Aspern-Essling, 20-22 May). It proved a failure, which
caused considerable losses and the death of Marshal
Jean Lannes. A month later, on 5 and 6 July, almost on the
same ground, Napoleon, who had received the backing of the Italian
army led by Prince
Eugène de Beauharnais and Etienne
Macdonald, inflicted on the Austrian army the Wagram
defeat. On the 11th, a new French victory at Znaim, decided the
Emperor
of Austria Francis I to seek an armistice, signed the next
day. On October 14th, the Treaty of Vienna ended the campaign.

That campaign had nevertheless highlighted a revival of German
nationalism, whose serious consequences were still to come. This
was reflected, among other things, in the attempts to assassinate
the Emperor on May 23th in Regensburg and on October 13th in Vienna,
the latter carried out by Friedrich Staps. Staps was executed
on 17th, despite the efforts of Napoleon to let him live.

For now, Napoleon was offered in November 1809 by Prince Metternich
of Austria, who had become chancellor in July and wanted to pursue
a policy of rapprochement with France, to marry the Archduchess
Marie Louise. On 15 December, Napoleon and Josephine
de Beauharnais publicly broke up their marriage. On the 16th,
the marriage was dissolved by an act of the Senate. On January
9th, it was declared invalid by the Officiality of Paris, which
did not improve the relations between Napoleon and the Pope.

These relations had also continued to deteriorate throughout the
year. On May 17th, Napoleon annexed by decree the Papal States
to the French Empire. On June 10th, the Pope made public the excommunication
bull of Napoleon; on July 6th, the pontiff was arrested and taken
to Savona; on August 26th, he refused to appoint the bishops,
which led the Emperor to appoint on November 16th a committee
of bishops to examine the conflict between the Emperor and the
Pope. His uncle, Joseph
Fesch, Archbishop of Paris since January 31st, chaired the
committee.

At beginning of the year 1810, Napoleon devoted
his time to the delicate choice of a new wife. To that end, he
consulted the Privy Council, which presented several options:
the future empress could be Russian, Austrian, Saxon, or even
French. The first option was quickly abandoned upon refusal of
Tsar Alexander to give the hand of his sister. The choice of an
Austrian wife was required, and on February 7th was signed a temporary
marriage contract between Napoleon and Marie Louise, which the
Vienna court ratified on the 16th. On March 13th, Marie-Louise
set off and the civil marriage took place on April 1st. On the
next day, the religious ceremony celebrated by Cardinal Fesch
became an opportunity for further escalation of the dispute between
Napoleon and the Church: thirteen Italian cardinals refrained
from attending, despite the risk of a conviction for serious offence
to the Emperor.

Indeed, despite the efforts of the Emperor to wake in his clergy
the old Gallican reflexes (set of question of 11 January of the
Committee of Bishops), the authority of Pope Pius VII prevailed.
Cardinal Fesch caved in in September, as he refused to hold the
Archdiocese of Paris. It was up to the former migrated Jean-Siffrein
Maury to hold it, just to see himself banned from performing his
duties by the Pope (November 5th and December 18th), as the many
grievances inflicted by Napoleon to Pius VII had increased with
the annexation by the Empire of Rome on February 17th and the
award of the title of King of Rome to the Prince Imperial, yet
unborn.

In the year 1810, the reputation of an ogre of Napoleon was also
justified by other Empire expansions. On January 14th, the Kingdom
of Westphalia made it obvious by annexing Hanover. On March 16th,
France nibbled the south of Holland before swallowing it whole
on July 9th, after the abdication of Louis
Bonaparte. On December 13th was the turn of the coastal regions
of Germany. The Empire reached its maximum extension (one hundred
and thirty departments), but the Tsar was unhappy that his brother-in-law
lost the Duchy of Oldenburg on this occasion. This expansion,
as the rest of the foreign policy of Napoleon, was mainly aimed
at strengthening the continental blockade.

It was on the same grounds that he entered into an alliance with
Sweden on January 6th, 1810 and drew closer to the United States
of America by making decrees favoring free trade between the two
countries. The decree of Trianon (August 5th), which struck the
colonial commodities with exorbitant taxes was similarly inspired:
to do without imports from England.

However, this imperial policy was moving towards failure. The
Iberian peninsula was not submitted, the Spanish people remained
deeply hostile, and the English continued to keep Portugal. At
the other end of Europe, the Tsar, yielding to mysticism and its
aristocracy, banned in December 1810 the entry of French goods
in the Russian Empire, bringing Napoleon to write him a letter
at beginning of the year 1811, stating the end of their alliance.

The relations of Napoleon and Alexander I kept
deteriorating throughout 1811. Although duly forewarned of the
dangers of a military campaign in Russia by Armand
de Caulaincourt - back in June from his embassy in St. Petersburg
- the Emperor, before the diplomatic corps gathered to celebrate
his birthday on August 15th, threatened Russia with war. In December
he offered Austria and Prussia to join him against the Tsar. However,
in February, he had declined Bernadotte's
offers, who carried a proposed alliance with Sweden, so useful
in the context of the looming conflict.

Those already underway, however, only brought him mixed satisfaction.

In the Iberian Peninsula, even if Louis-Gabriel
Suchet was successful in Catalonia, André
Masséna failed to overcome Wellington.
Napoleon replaced Masséna by Marmont, denying that the French
army, harassed by elusive and increasingly bold guerillas, had
lost its superiority over the Anglo-Hispano-Portuguese opponents.
Yet Jean-de-Dieu Soult himself, who on evening of Austerlitz had
been described as "the first boatswain of Europe", was beaten
in Albuera.

In the Franco-British war, however, Napoleon believed he could
score. Unfortunately, his view was distorted by an overly optimistic
assessment of the economic crisis in Britain, submitted by the
Minister of Finance, Martin Michel Charles Gaudin.

Finally, the Pope and the Church continued to stand up to him.
In April 1811, Napoleon summoned the bishops of the Empire for
a national council but dissolved it on July, as the clerics declared
the Pope's consent necessary for the validity of their orders.
The Emperor then took under his own authority the measures he
deemed necessary. On July 27th, he regulated the appointment of
bishops by imperial decree, in an attempt to reduce the Pope's
powers. Pius VII accepted the new rules except in the Papal States
annexed to the Empire, where he refused to appoint new bishops.

Domestically, however, the Emperor had no serious concerns. Shortly
after passing the criminal code and the code of criminal procedure,
he had to prevent François-René de Chateaubriand from delivering
his acceptance speech at the French Academy. Indeed, the writer
attacked his predecessor, the regicide Marie-Joseph Chenier, dissenting
from the imperial policy that sought to suppress the memory of
old quarrels. His only concern: crop failures, which led Napoleon,
in August 1811 to establish a board of provisions designed to
address the threats of food shortage.

On the private side, the year proved more satisfying. On March
20th, 1811 Napoleon's son was born, named Napoleon Francois Charles
Joseph Bonaparte, receiving the title of King
of Rome. For him the Emperor quickly began to build a palace
on the hill of Chaillot (which had the upside of generating the
badly-needed employment in the economic crisis). Two months later
(May 22nd), the Emperor and Empress began an official visit in
the western departments and returned to Paris on June 9th for
the baptism of the King of Rome. A new Imperial couple's trip,
this time to Holland, took place from September to November.